orWine Tastings in the Comfort of you own villa or B&B while on holiday in Tuscany or Liguria

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Tuesday, 27 September 2011

I'm back...

This is not so much a gardening post, but an update on what's been happening to us. Good god, has it really been over a month since my last post? Thank you for all your enquiries about our well-being, we're still here, although our lives certainly haven't been boring.

The reason for my silence? Well it was a tale of broken friendships, betrayal and sex and you really don't want to know about it... Well I'm not going to tell you about it anyway, even if you do. The consequences: Conspiracy Cousin is back in the Netherlands for the time being, but has threatened to return soon, we went on a holiday to clear our heads and another lesson learned about humanity.

It was very spectacular, with airbags inflating and all. Luckily non of us was hurt and the car only had some minor damage. So on we went to France to relax a few days with friends. Eddie re-aquainted himself with his old friend from last year and the 2 dogs got on like a house on fire. So when one day we went to see some vineyards in the region we felt it was safe to leave the 2 dogs in the house. Unfortunately Eddie felt he had to live up to his name of Eddie, the B(eagle), named after the famous yet inept Britsh ski jumping legend, and jumped out of this fist floor window:

and got himself lost amongst the many lanes and alleyways of the city. It took a few hours of wandering around and quizzing the neighbours until we finally located him, as he had been taken in (kidnapped) by a family and held for ransom.

At the end of the week we finally limped home on a flat tyre. We had two very nice Norwegian helpXers house sitting in the meantime and looking after Mickey the cat and watering our land.

What else have been up to? We went grape picking for some friends:

...and I'm finally seriously working on a book: edible and medicinal herbs along the pilgrim routes of Europe. That'll keep me busy over the long winter evenings.

and in the garden? Although the temperatures are still pleasant, autumn is definitely in the air. We've had the first bits of rain after months of drought conditions and evenings are getting cooler. Generally yields this year were lower than usual as expected due to the loss of topsoil during last winter's landlsides. Weather conditions were almost perfect this year though, hadn't it been for that hailstorm, which destroyed much of our fruit crop.

Amongst the successes were litchi tomatoes, or rather as I prefer to call them by their less confusing scientific name (as they don't have much to do with tomatoes and nothing with litchies), vicious bastards.

It was Mr. H.'s sick sense of humour to send me some seeds of these. Yes, they do grow really easily, are drought and disease resistant and very decorative. But man! those things have some mean spikes on them! And now that I have a whole lot of these fruits, what do I do with them, having got bleeding fingers from picking them? They taste ok, a bit cherriesh, a bit tomatoish..., but I miss a bit of acidity in those things. They are fine as an addition to a salad that involves real tomatoes. So what else can you do with them?

Anyway, enough of this. A second crop of green beans is coming along very nicely. The first crop succumbed to disease and were finished off by the hail, but this lot's long healthy and is delicious.

Watering is no longer needed as seem to have enough dew at night to keep the soil sufficiently moist. I'll try not to make the next gap between posts so long.

Oh and we had a little concert in our house as part of the annual poetry competition:

What an impressive singer at your house! And a flying dog (with no injuries?) and spiky tomatoes, wow, but most of all those entrance sentences, they made me hold my breath! C`mon man, tell us more! What a blog post. I was going to write a new one myself, but I don`t think I can beat yours and should perhaps leave it. All my good wishes!

Sunflower, thanks for your concern. It's Eddie's flapping ears that must have slowed his fall.

Angela, the singer was very impressive. On other days she performs at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. A real privilege to hear her. It was in the part of our house that doesn't belong to us, but to the guy who is known as 'Il Barone' in the village. As for the rest of the story, maybe a brief version in private. The sex part of the story was only in the imagination of some though... ;)

Sounds like you have had a very interesting time of late but the important thing is that your litchi tomatoes are producing nicely.:) Careful with all those thorns. The next time I get a good harvest of them I was thinking of trying to dry the little fruits...bet they would be good that way.

Throw yourself into that book my friend, it sounds like it will be a good one.

"The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium." ~ Norbet Platt

Mr.H, I will concentrate on this book. During this winter we will be house sitting for some friends in a remote mountain village. I'll have plenty of time and little distraction while up there. Not to mention great mountain meadows full of wild foods.

So glad all of you (including Eddie) are ok! I can't wait to hear/read more about the book.Still planning to start a new blog at any time on this end, but I'm having trouble coming up with a name, and also sorting out some technical difficulties with domain names on typepad etc.

And here I thought it was easier to keep dogs than raise kids. Eddie you bad, bad boy! Scratch that thought of getting a beagle (seriously), I think we'll be better off with a turtle. Glad to see you back.

Laura, looking forward to hearing about your adventures in Montana. Keep us posted.

Rowena, when I was little we had a tortoise wandering around our council flat. It had a habit of climbing up the wall and sliding down with a big thump, whenever my mother wanted to have her afternoon nap. She confused our dog at the time though by disappearing in her shell. :)

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About Me

I am a Dutchman, who was brought up in Germany and has lived in the UK for a long time. I now live in Italy on the border between Liguria and Tuscany. English now is the language I feel most comfortable with, hence this blog is written in this language. Myself and my wife Susan live in a small hillside village above the town of Santo Stefano di Magra in the province of La Spezia. We also own a piece of arable land on the other side of the valley in Arcola, where we produce as much of our own food needs as possible. Our plot is about 2000 square meters and steeply terraced and boasts almost a hundred fruit trees of all manner. For money I run wild food foraging courses, design permaculture gardens, run wine tastings for foreigners, garden, teach English to local kids or anything else that happens to come my way, but bit by bit we are trying to wean ourselves off money altogether... Also check out my other blog on wine: thewineanarchist.blogspot.com